I
will post information about the United States Army North from Wikipedia.
 |
|
Fifth Army Shoulder Sleeve Insignia
|
Active
|
4
January 1943 – October 1945
June 1946 – present |
Allegiance
|
United
States of America
|
Branch
|
United
States Army
|
Type
|
Army
Service Component Command
|
Garrison/HQ
|
Fort Sam
Houston, Texas
|
Motto
|
"Strength
of the Nation!"
|
Engagements
|
World
War II
|
Commanders
|
|
Current
commander |
Lieutenant
General Perry L. Wiggins
|
Notable
commanders |
|
United States Army North is the Army Service Component Command
of United
States Northern Command. As the joint force land component command,
it is responsible for homeland defense and defense support of civil
authorities. It is garrisoned at Fort Sam Houston. From 1943 to 2004, it was
previously designated as Fifth Army.
 |
|
U.S. Army North / 5th Army Distinctive Unit
Insignia
|
History
World War II
The
Fifth United States Army was one of the principal formations of the U.S. Army
in the Mediterranean
during World War II. It was activated on 5 January
1943 at Oujda, French Morocco and made responsible for the
defence of Algeria and Morocco. It was also given the
responsibility for planning the American part of the invasion of mainland Italy.
It was commanded by Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark.
It
first saw action during Operation
Avalanche, the assault landings at Salerno in September 1943. Due to the low
numbers of American troops available in theatre it was made up of one American
and one British corps. It had the X Corps (United
Kingdom) and the VI Corps
(United States) under its command. At Salerno, X Corps landed on the
left flank, and VI Corps on the right flank. Progress was initially slow, due
in part to lack of initiative by the American corps commander, Maj. Gen. Ernest J. Dawley, who was subsequently
replaced. However, after heavy naval and air bombardment had saved the forces
from any danger of being driven back into the sea, and also with the approach
of the British Eighth Army
(which had landed further south), the German forces retreated.
Progress
was then good for a couple of months until the Germans turned, stood and
fought. The Germans established a position on the Winter Line, which included the formidable
defensive positions at San Pietro
Infine in the Liri Valley and at Monte Cassino.
By this point, Fifth Army had been reinforced by a second American corps, II Corps.
With the failure of the first operations to capture Monte Cassino, an attempt
was made to exploit the Allied preponderance in seapower before the coming
invasion of Normandy robbed the Mediterranean of the naval forces necessary for
an amphibious assault.
VI
Corps was withdrawn from the line and replaced by the French
Expeditionary Corps under General Alphonse Juin. They made a second attempt
to capture Monte Cassino in conjunction with the amphibious assault by VI
Corps, which again failed. VI Corps landed at Anzio
on 22 January 1944 in Operation Shingle,
and suffered many of the same problems as had been seen at Salerno. A lack of
initiative on the part of the U.S. commander, Maj Gen. John P. Lucas, combined with worries about
the Germans catching VI Corps off balance if it advanced too far in land
resulted in the bridgehead being bottled up. The Germans nearly breached the
last beachhead defences before again being driven off by heavy naval and air
support.
After
the failure of Shingle, a large reorganisation took place. Previously the Apennines
had been the rough dividing line between Fifth and Eighth Armies. However, the
dividing line was shifted westwards, to allow the concentration of both armies
on the western side of Italy for maximum firepower to break through to Rome.
the V Corps (United
Kingdom) was left on the Adriatic coast to pin down any German units
there. Fifth Army was relieved of responsibility for Cassino and the final
phases of that battle saw Indian, New Zealand and finally Polish troops thrown
against the fortress. Fifth Army also lost X Corps at this time, since it was
felt that having exclusively American-organised units under Fifth Army and
British-organised units under Eighth Army would ease logistics.
The
breakthrough was achieved during the spring of 1944. Coordinated assaults by
all the Allied forces, except V Corps, which was confined to a holding action,
broke through. II Corps attacked along the coast, the French Expeditionary
Corps, in a classic demonstration of mountain warfare, broke through on the
right flank of Fifth Army, and VI Corps broke out of the Anzio beachhead. By
early summer, Allied forces were well on their way to capturing Rome.
At
this point, one of the more controversial incidents in the history of Fifth
Army occurred. The strategic conception of General Harold Alexander, commanding 15th Army Group was that the forces of VI
Corps, coming out of Anzio would trap the retreating German forces, and leave
them to be annihilated by the advancing Fifth and Eighth Armies. However, in
contravention of orders, Clark diverted units of VI Corps towards Rome, leaving
a small blocking force to attempt to stop the Germans. It failed to do so, and
the German forces were able to escape and reestablish a coherent line to the
north of Rome. Clark claimed that there were significant German threats which
necessitated the diversion, but many believe that he was primarily
glory-seeking by being the first to liberate Rome.
Two
days after Rome fell, Operation Overlord
was launched. The strategic conception of Overlord called for a supporting
operation to be mounted by invading southern France. In order to do so, forces
would have to be withdrawn from Allied Armies in
Italy. In the end, VI Corps was withdrawn, forming the nucleus of
the field forces of the US Seventh Army
for the invasion of the French Riviera,
Operation Dragoon.
The French Expeditionary Corps was also withdrawn, to allow its men to be used
to form French First Army,
a follow-up formation for Dragoon. In two months, the strength of the Fifth
Army dropped from 250,000 to 150,000, or the equivalent of 9 divisions. However
the Brazilian
Expeditionary Division as well as other divisions had arrived to
align with IV Corps,
so two corps were maintained within Fifth Army.
In
the 2nd half of 1944, the Allied force on Italian Front within the US 5th Army
and 8th British Army resembled more a multi-national force being constituted
by: Americans (including segregated African/and/Japanese-Americans), British,
French, members of French and British colonies (New Zealanders, Canadians,
Indians, Gurkhas, Black Africans, Moroccans, Algerians, Jews and Arabs from the
British
Mandate in Palestine, South Africans, Rhodesians), as well as Brazilians and
exiled forces from Poland, Greece, former Czechoslovakia and anti-fascist
Italians.
The
Germans reestablished their line across Italy at the level of Pisa
and Rimini. The Allied forces spent another
winter frustrated at their lack of ability to break through. This time Fifth
Army was straddling the Apennines, with many of its units occupying high,
exposed positions which were miserable to garrison. That winter also saw a
significant change of command. General Clark moved to command 15th Army Group,
and Lieutenant General Lucian Truscott
was appointed to command Fifth Army in his place. Truscott would command the
Army from 16 December 1944 until the war's end.
In
the final operations against the German Army Group C, the Eighth Army initiated the
main offensive on the Adriatic coast, and then the Fifth Army also broke
through the German defenses around Bologna. The German units, in the main, were
pinned against the Po River and
destroyed, or at the very least deprived of their transport and heavy weapons,
which effectively made many of them useless. II Corps units raced through Milan
towards the French frontier and the great port of Genoa.
The IV Corps pushed due north through Verona, Vicenza and as far as Bolzano and
to the Brenner Pass, where they linked up with elements of the US Seventh Army.
Its
role in Italy cost Fifth Army dearly. It suffered 109,642 casualties in 602
days of combat. 19,475 were killed in action. The Fifth Army headquarters
returned to the United States in September, 1945. 2 October 1945 saw Fifth Army
inactivated at Camp Myles Standish,
Massachusetts.
In
the informal athletic competitions held between units of the European and North
African theaters, the 5th Army was among the most successful, winning titles in
baseball, boxing, swimming and football during the 1944 season. The football
championship was gained after a victory over 12th Air Force in the Spaghetti
Bowl on January 1, 1945.
Post war
Its
next role was considerably less violent, and it was reactivated on 11 June 1946
at Chicago under the command of Major-General John P. Lucas, who had commanded Operation Shingle at Anzio
during World War II. It was redesignated Fifth
United States Army on 1 January 1957. Its postwar role was as a command and
control headquarters for Army Reserve
units, formally responsible for the training of many Army troops and also the
ground defense of part of the continental United States. In June 1971, Fifth
Army moved to its current base at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Redesignation in 2004
In
2004, Fifth Army transferred its Reserve preparation obligations to First Army,
and became responsible for homeland defense and Defense Support of Civil
Authorities (DSCA) as United States Army North, the Army Service Component
Command of United States Northern Command. Joint
Task Force-Civil Support, a subordinate command, is designated as
the Department
of Defense (DoD) command element for Department of Defense
assistance to the overall federal response to a state governments request for
assistance in the event of a catastrophic chemical, biological, nuclear or high
yield explosive CBRNE emergency. The command also has a
subordinate Contingency Command Post (CCP), known as Task Force-51, which is
responsible for responding to all hazards incidents that require DOD
assistance. TF-51 can be employed as an all-hazards task force or a Joint Task
Force (JTF) with joint augmentation.
Structure and
Organization of the Fifth Army
Command Group
- Commanding General: Lieutenant General Perry L. Wiggins
- Deputy Commanding General-Operations: Major General William F. Roy
- Deputy to the Commanding General: Mr. Robert Naething
- Command Sergeant Major: Command Sergeant Major Hu Rhodes
No comments:
Post a Comment